Thursday, January 07, 2010

Debt-laden Japan completely unperturbed by UKP630bn spree

Of course the Times headline tried to hype it rather more than that, but no-one here took any notice :-) The Japan Times talked about "long-simmering worries" but there are still worries about ongoing recession, so the spend-first, worry-late approach may be justified. Anyway, the Japanese economy has been running on funny money for decades, and despite all the sound and fury, I for one don't expect the new govt to be very different from the old one in fundamentals - there may be shifts in spending priorities, but not in the basic philosophy of dirigisme. Indeed I suspect that most Japanese will not even have considered the possibility that there might be an alternative.

In these straitened times, our budgetary worries continue. A project I am involved in just had its annual review, and on the basis of a mediocre middling ranking (someone described it as a B+) next year's budget has been......increased by a substantial 10%. There is some ongoing restraint on salaries, so we won't actually get paid more, but will have to splash out the excess on electronics and travel, which is presumably the point of the bonus.

Of course we had to provide detailed budget plans to the Ministry some time ago, so will now have to provide new plans, along with an apology for getting it so badly wrong first time :-)